Yellowsnow serves as an anonymous community platform. It can be used as a tool to acquire relevant information to the immediate or distant environment of the amputee. As the amount of participants in the community grows, so does the amount of the information increases and becomes more accurate. To each participant is given the ability to be active in the project and contribute to the community. The project deals with raising and regaining the motivation level among amputees and temporary or permanent mobility disabled.
The idea for this project was developed as a consequence of a life changing event that accrued to me personally in 2008. My right leg was so severely hurt in an accident, that it had to be amputated. My life as I knew and experienced until that moment ceased to exist and a new and different period in my life has begun. It is hard to compare my life before the amputation and after it. This might seem as a strange way of thinking, but I’m considering myself lucky, having the chance to live with two healthy legs for almost 30 years. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll give almost anything to get my leg back but after accepting the fact that my leg will not grow back again, I was looking back on 30 year of living with two healthy legs and it gave me the urge to stand-up from the hospital bed and start-to-continue my life. The hardest part in losing a leg is not necessarily the amputation itself, but the daily struggle with the loss. Some people can handle limb loss more easily than others and continue with their lives almost without any psychological consequences. The majority will have to find the strength and the will to handle the loss. Like everyone else who went throw an amputation I had to overcome many obstacle and learn to walk again. My prosthesis is a foreign object which is supposed to replace my lost leg. Although it feels heavy and unnatural, it had to be integrated to my daily life so I can regain as many physical capabilities as possible. In Germany alone, approximately 50,000 people are being amputated every single year. The majority of those people will be amputated because of a sickness related complications; some, (like myself), will lose a limb because of an accident but all of them will find themselves struggling with everyday life physical obstacles. It is extremely hard for a healthy person to foreseen the majority of those obstacles. When I was still lying in the hospital bed, my father tried to understand my situation by doing his morning routine standing on one leg, an attempt which turned-out as un-clever and dangerous, causing him to almost slip in the bathtub holding a razorblade! For the amputee the physical obstacles occur mainly in unfamiliar environments and not at home (which is normally adjusted to the amputee’s personal needs). I was first presented with my prosthesis, while staying at the hospital and was taught how to use it later on in the rehabilitation. At the beginning of the prosthesis adjustment process, I used to look at other patients in the clinic, which were already walking fluently using their prosthesis and thought to myself “when will I be able to walk like that?” A year and a half later, as I was leaving a routine yearly checkup at the prosthesis clinic, a woman approached me on my way out and asked me “Will I be able to walk as well as you?” Learning to walk again and getting used to my prosthesis was only the first step in getting used to my new life. Actions that were trivial and simple before my accident became a fairly complicated tasks which requires preparation and planning. Even a ”trip” to the store to get milk for the morning coffee could take up to an hour of preparation, involving in wearing the prosthesis, before leaving the house. It was only after I was released from the rehabilitation, that I have started to understand the prosthesis limitations and have gotten to know the obstacles which were lurking for me in the real world. In general obstacles can be divided into two major types: Permanent obstacles - such as Staircases, Slopes, softs and Rocky Pathways, Broken Sidewalks, etc. Those obstacles can be either hard or impossible to overcome, which may lead the amputee to choose a different route or to avoid those locations completely. Temporarily Obstacles - Wet Autumn leaves, Rain, Paddles, Mud, Snow, Ice, etc. Those are mostly created by the weather. Out of the four yearly seasons winter is the one which influences amputees the most. Locations and routes which are obstacle free in normal conditions become a huge challenge in winter, under snow, ice or even rain, as prosthesis nowadays can hardly adjust to these situations. A simple walk can end up in a slip and an injury. As a new amputee, the first season change between autumn and winter was overwhelming. It began with an incident in which I have slipped on a seemingly harmless wet autumn leaves and broke my prosthesis. It continued with several cases in which I couldn’t even leave my apartment because of icy sidewalks. Those occurrences affected my will to get out of my apartment in purpose of almost any activities (both social and professional). Additionally, my motivation to be physically active has also sunk, due to the fact that the type of sports activities that I have practiced before my accident, present now a huge challenge. As I started looking for ways to motivate myself to get out more, I realized I’m lucking information, which cans warn about possible obstacles outside. Relevant information of this kind can reduce the unknown factors and allow me to choose an accessible route. As I did not find a source for this information I experimented in combining the information from “Google Street View” and online webcams, a method which proved itself as un-useful most of the times due to lack of credibility and missing or outdated data. This is what triggered and started the process of creating this kind of tool myself. It made me curious to explore the issue of motivation among people who are in a similar situation to mine and it intrigued me to design a solution which will deal with both psychological and physical aspects. As motivation is the main issue in the tool I intended to create, I found it essential, that the first stage of the project would be researching and learning as much as possible about this subject.
The main Idea behind the Project is to create a mobile map platform based on a user’s collateral input, which will be collected by a specific piece of Hardware at the user’s end. The platform intended to accompany the users from the early stages of their rehabilitation through returning to their normal life. The platform will provide guidance to the users in order to overcome physical and psychological barriers and will shows them what can be accomplish with their Prosthesis.
The hardware part of the platform is a device which will act as a mediator and gather the member’s walking-habits-data and transfer it to the application. The hardware device will perform both as a receiver and transmitter. It will gather the user’s movement data using a built-in GPS and sensor, log and store the data in a database and transmit the data wirelessly to the application.
The target is part of the application build-in motivational system, which leaves the user the option to choose for himself a distance target and a time frame for him to achieve it. The achievement stamps will act same as a real passport. It will indicate what have the user achieved so far. When a user will pass a milestone or his target, a screen will pop-up indicating and congratulating the member on his achievement.
The APP will show possible alternatives for a requested route and the option to examine their chosen routes in more details. Outdated information and weather condition such as snow, ice or even rain can affect existing user routes; it can change routes from doable to impossible. Older routes will be slowly covered with virtual snow layer in a grading order, eventually leaving only the fresh created routes.
